Dadr'Ba (34 page)

The data would be compiled and analyzed immediately, but it could be hours before the final results, including a possible way to disable or defeat these cruel, despicable devices would be available. Then with the little time remaining Tn’Ya collected data on the residual dirt that was left on the kill-vest to get an idea where the worksite might be located and what special materials might be that they are mining.

The team knew going in that the microbot wouldn’t be able to follow the Prz’Nr’s all the way to the mining site. It was just barely fast enough to keep up with a walking soldier or Prz’Nr for short distance. Keeping it up for very long risked disaster. Su’Zi confessed that she was lucky to keep up with the soldiers and keep from being stepped on during the initial entry into the Prz’Nr Vestibule. She didn’t want to risk a second, longer attempt.

The microbot is tough and could survive getting stepped on by a Prz’Nr, but the Prz’Nr would surely react and give away its presence. If stepped on by a soldier the microbot would be severely damaged or crushed, and its antimatter power source could catastrophically fail, destroying the microbot, along with all of its equipment, including the irreplaceable QECD. The fact that it would probably take a portion of the soldier’s foot along with it would be little consolation.

It had first been considered riding the kill-vest onto the Prz’Nr and then to the work site. That was decided as too risky; it would be virtually impossible to ride out the day without being noticed and discovered. Even though knowing the routes to the mining area and knowing about the mining area itself was important, and even prove critical to the resistances developing plans. They had no way of knowing how the Prz’Nr would react if they discovered the microbot inside their kill-vest or in a fold of their clothing. The surveillance system was tuned to monitor every move of the Prz’Nr’s and detect any telltale indications that something was amiss. 

So instead of riding the kill-vest onto the Prz’Nr it was decided to sneak into the Prz’Nr’s’ cell unobserved by the soldiers and surveillance cameras. Then after lights out, establish contact with one of the Prz’Nr’s, once in communication, accompany them on their workday and complete the pattern of life data collection and analysis, tracing and timing routes, locations, and duties, then devise an escape plan.

All they had to do was get out of the kill-vest cabinet and to some safe hiding spot then sneak into the Prz’Nr’s cell.

There was a lot of anxiety about jumping to the floor. The engineers assured P’Ko, Su’Zi, and Tn’Ya that the microbot could handle the G’s from what amounted to a fall of a relative distance of several hundred meters, but the first person experience from the operator’s perspective was scary. The door opened and with others focusing on where the soldiers and the Prz’Nr’s were looking P’Ko focused on the leap.

As soon as he got the all clear. P’Ko launched the microbot out of the cabinet and for a moment there was the sensation of falling. When they hit, everyone could have sworn that they felt it physically. The microbot bounced, and P’Ko luckily managed to hit the deck running after the first bounce. Once safe in the corner and in protect mode, the team in the control room cheered and wanted to do it again.

Everything that they did now ran an even higher risk of detection. In spite of high the level of confidence among the resistances analysts that the soldiers and other surveillance systems were operating in a mode intended to monitor the Prz’Nr’s and not look for microbot infiltrators. The detection and loss of the microbot, with its QECS would be a devastating blow to the resistance. If captured, they were prepared to short the antimatter power supply and self-destruct the microbot, but it would be a loss that the resistance could hardly afford and wanted to avoid at all costs.

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With last night’s mission was a success, the kill-vest analysis determined that its lock transmits an unlock code generated and stored in the locking mechanism each time the kill-vest is worn. The unlock code is passed to a control point using a phase locked communications method whose communications encryption is relatively weak, but is very secure in that any tampering or attempts to intercept or monitor would be instantly detected, setting off an alarm and security response. There’s no nonvolatile RAM in the kill-vest, only volatile RAM storage tied to a detect tamper system linked directly to the destruct mechanism. The kill-vest is not fail-safe, it’s fail destruct, once the destruct sequence begins it will destruct unless phase locked communications from the command post is resumed and an abort destruct signal with the unlock code is received from the command post.

Tonight’s mission will be the most dangerous yet; it will leave the microbot exposed without cover longer and presumably there will be more surveillance devices where they will be going. P’Ko knew that it cost a significant portion of the resistance’s budget to build this first machine, building a second machine may be impossible.

P’Ko didn’t know if the resistance even possessed a second QECS. And a mistake would add months to the rescue attempt and likely result in the execution of the Prz’Nr’s. Failure was not an option. If successful, the resistance for the first time will have a system that can sneak into the CA’s most secretive meetings and find out what the CA and the CASS are up to. They could lift the veil of secrecy that surrounds so many of the doings of the CA and CASS, and finally, answer some of the most plaguing questions about Dadr’Ba.

P’Ko will be “driving” again with Su’Zi operating the defensive sensors and, hopefully, establish contact with one of the Prz’Nr’s. Tn’Ya was told that she’d have to sit tonight’s mission out, as much as she wanted to be there, she was under CASS surveillance, and they couldn’t risk raising the suspicion of the CASS by being “off their grid” too many nights in a row. She would be needed for later missions and can review the recording of tonight’s mission during the post-mission debrief and analysis later.

Having practiced on a virtual simulation, P’Ko ran along the floor under the soldier’s feet. It’s fortunate that soldier’s steps are predictable, and they don’t need to see their feet walking, otherwise, it would have been hard to miss the microbot as it scampered back and forth between its feet, its adaptive camouflage fluctuating from the ebbing energy expenditure taxing its systems.

If P’Ko ran too fast, for too long, while sensors were running, he would lose too much energy and systems would quickly fail. Thankfully the failures are programmable, priority was given to motion, adaptive camouflage, and motion detect warning. Radar, EO (electro-optical)/IR (infrared) and HS (hyperspectral) had already been shut down. X-ray diffraction and neutron imaging/spectroscopy systems have been fully powered off and secured. They use too much power to allow movement and need a stable, static platform to operate optimally.

Now all those sensors were just dead weight, with the power running low P’Ko felt like he was operating at 4 G’s at Dadr’Ba’s lower levels with a Se’Ro’Bs on his heels. He dodged back and forth between giant feet, first of the soldiers and then of the Prz’Nr’s as he worked his way into the cell.

As difficult as it was to keep from getting stepped on by the soldier it was more difficult staying between the footfalls of the last Prz’Nr as he entered the cell following his four comrades. The Prz’Nrs must have been tired; his steps were labored and halting, unpredictable, which forced P’Ko to accelerate more quickly, more often and force the depletion of the microbots energy reserves more quickly.

P’Ko wished suddenly that Su’Zi was “driving” she was a better driver than he, but it was too late, there was no time to switch positions. Luckily P’Ko only needed to avoid a few steps.

The Prz’Nr was watching the back of his cell mate in front of him and not his own feet as they entered the cell. Had the Prz’Nr looked down and saw the microbot scampering underfoot and showed any notice or surprise the surveillance cameras looking down on the scene would have surely detected it. The resistance’s analysts had assured them that the surveillance systems monitoring the Prz’Nr’s are tuned to watch the Prz’Nr’s and their actions, not tuned to detect a micro-robotic intruder, and so far their assurances held true. 

After a couple of harrowing steps, P’Ko was inside, and he guided the weakening microbot out of harm’s way. He slowed the microbot attempting to conserve enough power to find and reach safety. The team shifted into high gear in their search, a broad beam EO/IR scan was executed. LIDAR would have been more useful, but it consumed too much power and was incredibly easy to detect, so it wasn’t installed on the microbot.  P’Ko had ducked the microbot to the left just inside the door staying near the wall using for cover, the commotion of the Prz’Nr’s entering, their movement around the room, and the shutting and sealing of the door. Some of the Prz’Nr’s exited what appeared to be a day room and headed down a hallway across from the entry door.

P’Ko crept the microbot along the wall edging around the room towards safety behind a couch that he spotted just after entering the room, the microbots power reserves nearly depleted, but slowly starting to build again.

Su’Zi, psychic alarm startled P’Ko and he impulsively attempted to jump, but found she had engaged the freeze function available at her terminal, it then settled in, she had also sent a psychic alarm to freeze. P’Ko worried that they had been detected. But Su’Zi was saying wait, wait… now! P’Ko jumped, using every joule of energy available, launched the microbot toward the place Su’Zi indicated, a narrow crack between the sofa and the wall.

The microbot lay dead, crumpled on its side, in total system shutdown, it’s power supply slowly built power back up and as the communication system connected to the QECS on board the microbot rebooted and came back online the microbot team nursed the precious little warrior back to life.

Su’Zi slowly increased power to the passive sensors and the displays started to return to life. Su’Zi thought to the microbot crew, ‘this is going to take some time,’ an alert was sent psychically for experts to gather to analyze the new threat, Su’Zi already had a clip, and passed a high-resolution snap to the team’s displays.

As they moved into the Prz’Nr’s quarters from the kill-vest airlock the microbot executed an EO/IR scan; its sensors picked up a CASS minibot. It was electro-optically camouflaged to blend into the wall and ceiling color but wasn’t actively camouflaged from IR detection. It was on alert indicated by its heat signature and its sensors focused on the Prz’Nr’s as they entered their quarters.

The initial reports from the experts, many of them at remote locations, began filtering in.

The preliminary analysis is that it is a conventional general purpose CASS minibot built and designed like most other CASS other surveillance systems to monitor people and are not adequately equipped or programmed for the detection of something like the resistance microbot.

The report cautioned against being too bold within line of sight of the CASS bots, whether soldier robots or minibots, their senses are adaptive and will take notice if exposed to an anomaly, even a minor one, too frequently.

Once discovered the minibot’s laser system could make short work of the resistance microbot. The laser could easily damage the microbots trickle feed antimatter power source causing it to lose the magnetic integrity holding it’s antimatter core in place. Although it’s incredibly small, the systems failure would cause a good-sized explosion.

Respecting the analysts caution not to repeatedly expose themselves to the minibot and cause notice, the team waited. After a while the rest of the Prz’Nr’s headed down the hallway to what must have been the kitchen/dining area. The team deployed a pair of its single sensor beetlebots one EO and one IR. The microbot team watched as the beetlebot probes slowly scuttled out from the microbots hiding place and surveyed the scene.

The beetlebots were made for close work, designed to operate inside tiny crevices, not out in the open. Exposed as they were for this mission the beetlebots found themselves virtually blind, suffering extreme tunnel vision, the technician supporting the mission began scrambling to adjust the operating parameters and software to compensate for the probe sensors myopic limitations.

Slowly the view began to come into focus; it took some maneuvering to scan a view of the whole room and determine its layout. The room must be their day room; it held a couple of divans and a couple of lounge chairs facing a free standing flat-panel display adjacent to the entry door whose edges glowed green from some energized seal. Opposite from the entrance, a hallway, and upon adjusting the sound controls, came the noises of conversation and food preparation. On the ceiling, the beetlebots detected a second minibot on the ceiling above divan where the microbot lay hid. The other minibot still in the room positioned to watch the activity down the hall

So there’s least two CASS minibots, each staying within direct line of sight of the other leading the analysts to suggest that at least one form of their communication is line of sight. The room also possessed two EO/IR/lowlight surveillance cameras positioned so they can’t be physically approached without observation by itself or the other camera. The cameras are high-resolution wide-angle able to zoom in with no need to pan or tilt, a much smaller version of the wide area surveillance system that is used to monitor Nu’Tn.

Finally, the decision was made for the microbot to come out of hiding and use its more advanced sensors to evaluate the threat. P’Ko, having charged up the microbot during the wait carefully guided the microbot out from its hiding spot and recovered its beetlebots.